Frame skipping problems

Phil G.

I've been having some really annoying problems with my (relatively) new computer across multiple games, and I hope that you guys can help me out.

Although my specs are somewhat decent (X2-4600+, 2 GB ram, 7600GT OC, VISTA), in many games which I should be able to run (particularly in Oblivion and World of Warcraft), even though I have a stable framerate, I get this kind of frame skipping (as in, every now and then, it just seems to jump forward a bit). This is incredibly annoying, so much so that it makes me want to stop playing the games.

I've tried changing various things (put in an 8800GTS 640MB, put in faster ram in greater quantities, better power supply), but it didn't help. Lowering graphics options such as draw distance, effects, texture size, resolution, etc. also doesn't help at all. Therefore, considering my CPU isn't THAT old, I narrowed it down to two possible options (besides Act of God): the motherboard, or Vista.

I bought the computer as a pack (HP a1730n) and just replaced the graphics card and power supply. I also use an external soundcard (EMU 0404 USB), but turning this off doesn't help. Here are my full specs:

- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (dual-core, 2.4 GHZ/core)
- Asus A8M2N-LA Motherboard (from what I could find)
- BFG Geforce 7600GT OC 256MB PCI-E (tried replacing this with little effect)
- 2GB PC4200 DDR2 RAM (tried replacing this with 3GB PC7200, no effect)
- 450 Watt Powersupply (tried replacing this with 700 Watt, both good quality PSUs, but no effect)
- 7200 RPM SATA HD
- Windows Vista 32-bit Home Premium

Any help to this confounding problem would be GREATLY appreciated.

Mblackwell

Is this only Direct 3D games?

If so, off the top of my head it could be a little setting that changes how many frames get rendered ahead.

If not, I'm not sure although it could be the voltage setting in the bios. I had a weird problem with FEAR where it would constantly lag at weird points for seemingly no reason even with a 6600GT (which shouldn't really lag with that game although it is a taxing game on the system), but changing the voltage got rid of this problem.

Ravenger

Its possible that you have your refresh rate set too high for your screen, causing your video card to run faster than your screen can handle it. or vice versa, causing a lag in between the two.

Phil G.

Thanks for the replies so far. It's not the "frames rendered ahead" thing since I've tried fooling around with that option in nHancer with no real change.

As for the refresh rate, it's an LCD monitor at 60Hz refresh rate (the only option), so I don't think that's it. I have it set to this in both Display Settings and NVidia control panel. One interesting thing that this brought up though, was that I checked System Information and it says that my monitor's running at 1680x1050 at 59 Hz. This doesn't really add up now. My monitor's a Samsung 226BW and I'm running it through a DVI cable. I'll try it with VGA and see if that makes a difference, as I never once considered it could be some weird monitor problem.

[Edit] Well, changing to VGA did nothing, so that's not the problem. If anyone else has any other suggestions or has experienced this, let me know. I'm a little hesitant to uninstall Vista, formatting my harddrive, and installing XP since it isn't at all guaranteed to fix this problem.

Oh, and I can't change shit with my BIOS, it's incredibly limited.